Sometimes the post just decides - for better or worse - to go its own sweet way

'Bye now,' says a friend, and I'm reminded that this expression sounds exactly the same as buy now, something that stores and online sites encourage you to do all the time. As if this might be your last opportunity ever to grab the bargain (which is often something you don't want or need).

It may be the last chance you'll have, of course...you might be dead of a heart attack before you get out of the store, or before you've finished closing off the tab on the browser. But that aside, there usually isn't the great imperative to get on and buy the thing now that the store would like you to think.

It's like those ads you see on TV which tell you that there's only ten minutes in which you can purchase a particular item. If you actually do ring up, you find there's a queue, and you hold on for fifteen minutes and find that the supposed ten minutes in which you were to buy the thing have gone, and yet, amazingly, the item is still well and truly available.

None of this has anything to do with percussion instruments. You're going to ask how I made that leap. Well, this is a postmodern blog, after all, and leaps which lack connection are commonplace here, as they should be. I've just been reading Terry Eagleton's How to Read Literature, and he informs us in there that postmodern writing is full of sudden shifts and disconnections. So accept that fact that I've made a sudden shift and disconnected, and you'll be all right again. You might have to go and get yourself a small sedative, but don't worry about that. You'll have noticed that now I've shifted from postmodernism to stream of consciousness anyway, and perhaps it's well and truly time to bring this post to a close.

If such a thing is possible in postmodern writing. Closure isn't what it's all about there. And how can there be an end to a stream of consciousness?

All too much for this time of the day, especially when you've been up since 5.30 am and busy ever since.

Postmodern means....?

At work I often read The Tall Skinny Kiwi blog, and recently he referred back to an older post from Dec 5th, 2003 (which is practically in the primeval times of blogging) in which he looked at the word/idea/concept of 'postmodernism' with The Princess Bride in mind.

It begins like this:

Postmodernism. I do not think it means what people think it means. This is the topic of Brian MacLaren's response to Charles Colson's latest attempt to dismiss the word "postmodern".

His response is gentle and polite. One might have expected more reaction. There could have been the swishing of swords or, at the very least, a strong cautionary warning like, “I would not say such things if I were you”. Or, even harsher, “You killed my favourite word. Prepare to dialogue.”

The rest is here.